Religious fundamentalism linked to brain damage of ventromedial prefrontal cortex (vmPFC)
This is fascinating.
A small study has linked bilateral damage to the ventromedial prefrontal cortex (vmPFC) with religious fundamentalism:
ABSTRACT
OBJECTIVE:
The psychological processes of doubting and skepticism have recently become topics of neuroscientific investigation. In this context, we developed the False Tagging Theory, a neurobiological model of the belief and doubt process, which proposes that the prefrontal cortex is critical for normative doubt regarding properly comprehended cognitive representations. Here, we put our theory to an empirical test, hypothesizing that patients with prefrontal cortex damage would have a doubt deficit that would manifest as higher authoritarianism and religious fundamentalism.METHOD:
Ten patients with bilateral damage to the ventromedial prefrontal cortex (vmPFC), 10 patients with damage to areas outside the vmPFC, and 16 medical comparison patients, who experienced life-threatening (but non-neurological) medical events, completed a series of scales measuring authoritarianism, religious fundamentalism, and specific religious beliefs.RESULTS:
vmPFC patients reported significantly higher authoritarianism and religious fundamentalism than the other groups. The degrees of authoritarianism and religious fundamentalism in the vmPFC group were significantly higher than normative values, as well; by contrast, the comparison groups did not differ from normative values. Moreover, vmPFC patients reported increased specific religious beliefs after brain injury.CONCLUSIONS:
The findings support the False Tagging Theory and suggest that the vmPFC is critical for psychological doubt and resistance to authoritarian persuasion.
As protests sweep the world in response to the video Innocence of Muslims, Pope Benedict has made some comments on religious fundamentalism on his way to Lebanon:
“The basic message of religion must be against violence which is a falsification like fundamentalism”
Indeed.
September 15th, 2012 at 7:42 am
Well that’s good enough for me! The police must now lock up every Christian until they can be “cured”.
Stalin must be laughing in hell to see his favourite lie repeated again.
September 15th, 2012 at 1:50 pm
Reading the abstract, I would say it is as full of holes, at least potentially, as a Swiss cheese.
September 15th, 2012 at 2:35 pm
In hoc signo vinces†
As protests sweep the world in response to the video Innocence of Muslims, normative values and the truth became solely what the Religion of Peace dictated them to be.
The Innocence of Muslims and the death of cynicism, the video was used as a ruse and a pretext for the violence.
September 18th, 2012 at 3:35 pm
Related to this study:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22787439
“Patients with vmPFC damage were (1) more credulous to misleading ads; and (2) showed the highest intention to purchase the products in the misleading advertisements, relative to patients with brain damage outside the prefrontal cortex and healthy comparison participants. The pattern of findings was obtained even for ads in which the misleading bent was “corrected” by a disclaimer. The evidence is consistent with our proposal that damage to the vmPFC disrupts a “false tagging mechanism” which normally produces doubt and skepticism for cognitive representations.”
So someone with this type of damage would be more likely to fall for unsubstantiated claims like those of religious extremists or conspiracy theorists.
It doesn’t necessarily work the other way round though. Such beliefs don’t indicate that type of brain damage.